Guys, guys, come on! "Mastering", by definition, is the very *last* thing that happens immediately before something (whether it's music, film, a video game, or whatever) is put on it's final medium: the "master" copy, which is the one that others are copied from. Mastering, in regards to music, is not, and never has been, about getting any specific element louder or quieter - it's about making all the songs on the whole album sound good when played
together, as in back-to-back, as well as making sure the master copy is technically compliant with industry standards. There is an entire mastering forum here on HR with quite a few active professional mastering engineers in it if you want to learn about mastering. They won't tell you how to get your kick drum louder in the mix, however - they'll tell you that's a mix-decision that should be made loooonnnnggg before the mix is sent to the mastering house.
On the other hand - how much dead-space to leave between track 2 and track 3 on an album - now *that* is a mastering decision. How much to compress and limit track 4 to bring it's RMS signal up to a level that isn't noticably different than track 3 or track 5 - *THOSE* are mastering decisions.
@R.I.C.H.: This mix sounds good, man. That key-change in the intro threw me off again - I think it's too early in the song to do something that dramatic, and I also think it kind of lessens the impact of the change later in the song (where I think it sounds great). But again - that's a totally subjective opinion. Any nitpickings I could have over anything mixwise, has actually already been covered - I'd definitely love to hear it with some vocals.
